Blue Plague, Red Redemption

Chapter 14: Damien Parnell

Parnell woke up to a feeling of tension and soreness all over his body. Every movement, every breath, was just a little bit painful. He was not one of those people that considered workout soreness as a 'good pain.' He'd much rather be without it. The gravity drug cocktail that Kouri gave him the day before made his muscles hyper-responsive from all the running around she made him do. Even his fingers and toes were hurting, trying extra hard to get stronger and more resilient in a fraction of what would otherwise be considered normal. Parnell was intimately familiar with this sort of treatment. He himself was renowned for the immune-system-enhancing treatments that he had spent half his life working on.

Parnell took his time getting into his suit for the first time without help—over an hour and a half—triple-checking every joint and every seal. He didn't have the equipment to cause it to contract around his body, so it was hard to be sure that he had it on right. He eventually convinced himself that he had it on correctly and took off his helmet for comfort as he made his way over to Docking Ring One, Bay Four to report for the day's training. Parnell never thought of himself as a particularly adventurous guy. He'd gotten pretty good about avoiding any situations in life that were in any way dangerous or physically demanding, like extreme sports or driving fast. But now he had no say in the matter. He was doing astronaut training whether he liked it or not. Which he didn't—yet turning back was inconceivable. The continued advancement of both his career and the state-of-the-art was essential. Some psychological part of him had mentally burned all boats leading back to Earth and was forcing him to keep moving forward no matter how scared or uncomfortable he might have been. Though he couldn't say for sure that he was actually scared because all he consciously felt was this growing anxiety in his belly as his elevator approached the docking ring. He decided the best option was to ignore it and move forward, right as the doors opened.

Unlike all the rest of the decks that were designed for humans, the docking ring seemed to be made for crates and machines. It had a mostly open layout with stacks of crates laying in various, seemingly arbitrary spots, that could only have made sense to a computer algorithm optimizing things dozens of steps ahead. Parnell occasionally had to navigate around robotic crawlers moving the crates around from one ship's bay to another's or to the freight elevator as he made his way to his meeting point next to Bay Four. He knew he had found the right spot because he saw two other people with loose vac suits like his own waiting around holding their helmets in their arms like he was. Both were clearly women. Their suits weren't skin-tight yet, but they were close-fitting and didn't leave much to the imagination. One of them he quickly realized was Silva. He made sure his head was upright and his gaze eye-level so he wouldn't accidentally get caught glancing at her curves.

"You here for the translating training?" asked the other woman. Her dark features were hard to make out in the reddish light on this floor, but he guessed she was about a decade his senior and almost as fit as her younger companion.

"Translating?" asked Parnell quizzically. "Do you mean zero-G?"

"Oh boy. We've got another noob. Okay. Looks like we've got our class for today," said the woman. "I'm Holmes," the woman said, extending her gloved hand. "But if I like you, you can call me Mek."

"Parnell," he said as they shook, not sure what to make of her yet.

"And this is Silva," she gestured.

Parnell turned his head and gave a polite nod, trying not to come across as sleazy in any way. "Nice to see you again," he said, shaking hands with her as well for etiquette's sake. "So when do we start?" he asked, quickly moving on from the awkward moment.

"Shortly," said the woman. "I'm your trainer, but I'm also re-certifying myself today, so we need Khourchenko here to officially supervise. And speak of the devil. Kouri!"